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Forever Saying This Right Now

I was away for a conference this weekend and had no cell and no internet access, deep in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, only to find my blog had been visited by none other than Oliver Wang, who is beginning to strike me as the kind of person who simply must, no matter the circumstance, have the last word. Pity.

Be that as it may, I am not going to fully respond in this blog at this time to him, because I did not write “We Real Cool?” to attempt to have any kind of conversation with him, but more or less wrote it to say, “Fuck off!” So, let me make this brief. Call it “uncalled for” or “petty” or whatever, but you know the way that panel and that audience went after me was uncalled for and petty, and you were the moderator(!), and you let it happen. That’s a passive agressive way of saying “fuck off” don’t you think (Not to mention blogging about it later, and then getting mad that I did not remain the anonymous Black person you could blog about and wouldn’t answer back. Isn’t that what this is really about?)? But I like to say “fuck off” in no uncertain terms, and not with alot of bullshit niceties the way people act like they’re doing when they are really hostile and mad as hell. Just be mad as hell! Why act like you’re trying to be civil when you know you are also trying to tell me, albeit politely or passive aggressively, to “fuck off” too?

Or is that you think I am really trying to build with you? I don’t know why people don’t understand the difference between making an intervention and wanting to have a discussion. They aren’t one in the same, but the “Left” is so full of people who are “trying to build,” that they think that anything that comes from your mouth is an attempt to reach out. Not so. Why can’t people just stop what they’re doing and think about some shit before trying to write about it or do organizing? If you have been made to re-think some shit, then simply do that, THINK!

Now, on the issue of the Immigration Act–(and it’s relationship to the Civil Rights Movement) and the intentions or consequences of it–I will return to that issue at a later time. Not wanting to mirror the kind of knee-jerk tendency I am talking about, I am in no rush to defend my analysis on that. It is clearly a subject that a lot of assumptions are made about on the Left, and I will deal with those assumptions in a different format, in a more formal way. I don’t want the seriousness and the gravity of the stripping away of those assumptions to be done in the heat of the moment, and least of all on a blog. Hell, I am trying to write reviews for AfroPunk and The Emancipation of Mimi for God’s sake!

And that’s all I have to say on that. But is it me, or am I forever saying this right now?

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One thought on “Forever Saying This Right Now”

I didn’t interpret your essay as “fuck off” – I actually thought you were trying to float ideas out there for consumption and dialogue and my responses have tried to take those ideas seriously even when I had reservations about the tone.

Whether you have an interest in “building” or not is besides the point here. Whether you like it or not, by continuing to discuss these things in public forums, we’ve both taken our own steps to build a build a dialogue (however antagonistically or not) and I’d like to think the conversation that exists actually has constructive elements to it.